Seymur Stein, the legendary music executive who co-founded Sire Records, where he signed the Ramones and Madonna, died Sunday in Los Angeles after a long battle with cancer. He was 80 years old.
Stein co-founded the Sire record label in 1966, where he also signed Pretenders, Echo and the Bunnymen and Soft Cell. Artists such as Depeche Mode, Ice-T, The Cure, The Replacements, Everything But the Girl, My Bloody Valentine and Ride.
In 1983, he helped create the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, which led to the Rock Hall of Fame, where he was inducted in 2005. His greatness is beyond question.
He discovered Madonna, but his career is much more than that
In addition to supporting artists who were then in the shadows, Stein also encouraged rock stars to continue to create and innovate in their careers.
In the 1980s, he signed Brian Wilson to release his first solo album, and Lou Reed, who released the album New York in 1989.
Born on April 18, 1942, Seymour Steinbigle got his start in the music business as a teenager when he showed up at the offices of Billboard magazine and asked to hand-copy all the charts the publication had for each week since his birth.
The editors agreed and Stein completed the project. When he finished high school, he worked at Billboard.
In the early 1960s, he worked at a small record label called King and Red Bird. Stein then teamed up with producer and songwriter Richard Gottehrer and they formed Sire, an amalgamation of their first names.
Sire’s early years were weak, although they released Fleetwood Mac’s first blues albums in the United States. The label’s first hit came in 1973 with Hocus Pocus, by the Dutch band Focus, which reached number nine on the charts.
Gottehrer left the label two years later. That same year, Stein’s then-wife Linda had just seen a band called The Ramones at a seedy bar called CBGB’s and told Stein about them. The next day, Stein auditioned the group and, in 1976, Sire released their eponymous debut.
Linda became their manager and the Ramones released 11 albums with Sire. Talking Heads was another CBGB’s discovery, as was Richard Hell & the Voidoids.
Sire was distributed by Warner Bros. beginning in 1977 and acquired by the company in 1978. Stein continued at Warner Music, and the Sire label moved from one division to another before becoming inactive.
In 2012 he received Billboard’s Icon Award and retired in 2018. Seymour Stein was much more than Madonna.
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